When I entered our dorm, my team was seated around the table and playing another board game. Relief, guilt, anger, and relief again flashed across Casimir’s face before he waved me over. “Mari! Come join us, Healer’s orders. Don’t worry, no one has overdosed on team bonding before.”
“I can think of several examples.” I conjured an ice-stool for myself and joined them. “One team ran into a lone brain in the underground. No tentacles, no supporting organs, it was just a brain. The thing linked and blended the team’s minds before melting from psychic discharge. After spending hours relearning how to walk, the new hivemind crawled back to the surface. They reported their condition to Last Stand and then charged into the wilderness for ‘freelance hunting’. They were never seen again.”
Nyla grabbed a game piece. “Well, that’s grim. Do you have any fun tales?”
“I do!” Coatlie unwrap from my neck and coiled onto the table. My Anytool followed her and formed a hand to grab and hold cards for her. “Rancer’s Pit was a polyamorous band of warriors that slithered together both on and off the battlefield, if you know what I m—why is everyone looking at me like that?”
Casimir and Nyla were both locked rigid. Derek was outwardly relaxed, but his heart hammered in his chest. Only Riena seemed most unbothered. She did frown at my Anytool. “Is that going to smudge the cards?”
“They would have ignited by now if the seal wasn’t working.” I dealt myself in.
“Fine.” Riena looked between her team. “It’s fine, right?” Our Commander’s annoyance at the monster phobia in our group carried over the bond along with a deep concern for me.
Casimir and Nyla tried to relax. They pulled on my own ease to calm down. Derek felt them do that and did likewise. While none of them were necessarily afraid of snakes, most heroes developed a ‘fight or die’ reflex when seeing a monster of any kind. Intellectually, they knew Coatlie was with me at all times, but that didn’t mean they were ready to casually socialize with her.
“Riena, would you let Scarlet know I want to talk tomorrow? It’s about Axel.” I ignored my teammate’s struggles with tactically necessary monster association. Every hero should have that skill. Sometimes you are deep behind enemy lines and need to forge temporary alliances of convenience.
My Commander rolled dice and moved her piece. “She doesn’t trust me since I had elven family, but I think I can pass a message.”
Casimir looked up from his cards. “Speaking of which, I’d like to help with that.”
I played a card and stole his victory tokens. “All we’ve figured out is that we’ll need to search every dungeon in the school. Once we find more of his dens, we should be able to determine how he operates and search more efficiently from there.”
“At least the number of bombings have gone down.”
Derek swiped a cookie from the snack tray before Coatlie claimed it. “Did he do those for the attention? Perhaps the pursuit is part of his plan.” Coatlie took a bite when he wasn’t looking. Upon discovering the tampering, our Guardian relinquished his snickerdoodle to the noodle.
Nyla shrugged. “Dude sounds like an asshole. We’ll just have to be better than his plans.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” My token landed in the center, ending the round.
“Someone else roll her dice! The rest of us can’t control the number we roll.”
“You could with practice.”
While we played, I made denser and sharper ice shapes in my left hand. It really was unfortunate that I fought Gabriel with less than a few hours to train. Tomorrow’s match would go differently.
After the games, I retired to my room, and Fyrnell pulled me to the bed. “Mari, you need to rest.” Two of their tentacles draped a blanket over me while others held me firmly in place and fluffed my pillow.
“I’m not 4, and a bird didn’t fly off with one of my playmates, but… I would appreciate if you kept a watch. Between chipping away at the curse and practicing Ice Creation, I could use the freed focus for more restorative exercises.”
Fyrnell didn’t argue that I needed true sleep. They too saw how pressing the curse was. That didn’t stop them from singing lullabies while I buried us in snow.
In the morning, I emerged from my frosty cocoon and got ready while Fyrnell scooped all the ice under the bed and made slurping sounds. I found Coatlie on the dining room table with hot cocoa and a blanket. For mysterious reasons, she glared at me before coiling around my neck and accompanying me to sparring class.
Gabriel had a shit-eating grin and bounced on the balls of his feet as he squared off against me in the central arena. “Ah Mari, I’m sooo glad you made it to your routinely scheduled ass kicking. Now that I’ve beaten you once, the gap between us will only grow.”
“That’s the first time you’ve used my name.” It was a little thing, but people who went through the kind of change I did noticed the little things.
He shrugged and proffered his claws magnanimously. “You are worthy of no others. I don’t know when my friend died and was replaced by you, but I’ll take the heroic name he earned for myself.”
“Fear not, Gabriel, the proper order will soon be restored, and these delusions plaguing you will be banished.”
I conjured a pillar of ice behind me and circled my foe. He lunged and caught two ice-spears aimed for his heart and head. The force of the throw sent him flying back.
“Your aura could efficiently boost flaps from shapeshifted wings. That would grant you far more aerial control than most warriors. Without such adaptations, leaps are only for the truly skilled.” My ice pillars formed next to me as I continued my circling.
“I don’t need advice from a loser!” He grew in size and covered himself in silver scales before ripping a rock from the floor and tossing it at me. I sliced through the stone with an ice-katana and continued my run. Gabriel had lunged to where he thought I would dodge and missed me.
I then threw ice-shuriken that he avoided or caught with his claws. “Avoiding direct attacks is essential for any Exemplar user, but it’s merely the first step on your road to true mastery.”
A pivot sent me sprinting across the ground toward him. Being a proper teacher, I used my aura to accelerate faster than normally possible. Any experienced hero knows that your acceleration on land is limited by the coefficient of friction between your feet and the ground times gravity. If left to its own devices, a hero’s aura will raise the coefficient far above one. That’s perfectly fine for most fighting, but when you really wanted to flex on someone, you could mess with the gravitational constant around yourself to effectively increase gravity. It would massively drain your stamina, but not nearly as much as trying to directly manipulate gravity. The subtler the mechanic, the more efficiently aura could manipulate it.
Gabriel dodged the ice-shuriken I threw ahead of me and moved to counter my supersonic charge. He didn’t expect the shuriken to bounce off an ice pillar and lodge in his back. The flinch of pain distracted him enough that I could slice off his left arm with my katana.
Before the arm fell to the ground, I launched another flurry of slashes that Gabriel deflected with claw, tail, and teeth. A tentacle shot from his stump to the missing arm. While he fended off one-handed strikes at it from my katana, I threw more shuriken with my left hand that deflected off pillars into other pillars or at Gabriel to keep him guessing and watching all the projectiles.
I could only bounce them off two pillars before their overall speed was too low to possibly hit my foe, but that proved to be more than sufficient options to overwhelm Gabriel’s perceptive powers. Dozens of tiny knives left shallow cuts as I switched between a gambit of ice-weapons. The overwhelmed shapeshifter couldn’t keep up, and slipped on a patch of ice-marbles. As he fell, I stabbed him with a dozen ice-spears, and he only dodged or deflected eight of them, leaving one in his gut, right thigh, left shoulder, and mouth.
Maws formed around the intrusions and bit through them, but not before I launched my Anytool into his stomach hole and had it crawl around his heart. The red mass oozed into him without resistance. He needs better internal defenders.
“And you lose.” I dusted off my hands and stepped back.
Gabriel shattered the ice and exploded to his feet. “We aren’t done until I say we’re—” His words cut off with a scream as my Anytool squeezed his heart and spine. The man then writhed on the ground.
“That burning sensation you're feeling is both literal heat and poison. If I wanted you dead, I would let you pump my tool throughout your system. Since this is a friendly duel, I won’t do such a thing.” I walked around my defeated foe and examined a freshly conjured nearly-clear ice-sword. “It’s a shame, really. I can tell that you are still holding yourself back. That garment around your chest stretches very well, but there is a limit, isn’t there? No shapeshifter would have an ideal combat form—there are too many variables—but your Exemplar ability is pushing you to an ideal starting point. I see you resisting it. Unless you like the taste of my boot, I’d say it’s time to be more optimal.”
I crushed his mouth with my heel and twisted it to emphasize my point. Shattered teeth ground against wet bloody flesh with each motion. My equipment wasn’t better than Gabriel’s shapeshifting. His failure to surpass me was due to fighting himself. While I always wanted to be better than him, humanity needed every hero at their best. Also, a part of me wanted to help him skip the years of agony and self-doubt I put myself through.
How could I describe the slow leeching of all color in the world, the steady muting of all joy, sorrow, rage, and every other feeling? The numbness, the maddening questions, the endless circling of justifications and arguments for doubt, that background noise that seeks to envelop you as all of life’s real problems mount: it’s death by a thousand cuts. You don’t notice it until your thoughts drift toward oblivion. All the torments and hate Gabriel orchestrated against me were a mere fraction of what I had done to myself. Did I want to get even with him? Sure, but the best way I saw to get even was to be content in our flesh together.
My face hurt from how much I smiled at the thought.
Gabriel didn’t like that at all and grabbed for my foot. My Anytool twitched again, and his hands went limp as he vacated his bladder and bowels. I sighed and backed away from him. “Suffer as much as you want, dear friend. I’ll be waiting for you to come to your senses.”
“Fuck you.” The voice was lower pitch, but the resonance was far lighter. His scales grew in size until they were thick plates like a true dragon. With his scales, his frame expanded. All his specially enchanted clothing tore and fell away from him, leaving the wrap around his chest.
Gabriel roared, stabbed into his own heart, and ripped out my Anytool. The motion nicked his remaining garment, causing it to unravel as the spatial enchantments failed and draconic breasts burst forth. The two-story tall woman rolled to her hands and knees. Wings burst from her back and rage induced foam leaked from the corners of her mouth.
My friend had frenzied again, dropping all inhibitions, leaving me to fight a giant naked dragon woman with long black hair, a crown of horns, and razor-sharp teeth. I couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t the first time I faced a monster with a comely countenance and shape, but it was the first time such a creature was human. The mental shields I had in place for nymphs and other creatures of unearthly beauty were powerless to stop Gabriel’s new form from affecting me.
That brief hesitation—at a fight of this level—proved my doom. The scaled femme fatale flipped from her position and smashed me into the sandstone ground with her foot. Then she kept stomping, driving me further into the arena until I begrudgingly flickered my intangibility to negate further tenderizing while being careful that Gabriel didn’t see my mist form and cover her foot in silver.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
From this vantage, I got an eyeful of her foot with three fore-talons and one rear talon. Like her claws, they were black. The sparkles hiding in the abyss indicated that they were a mix of various substances that creatures had weaknesses too. Thankfully, such dangerous toe-tips weren’t stabbing into me. My Anytool glooped into the pit and wrapped around my wrist.
I could escape this predicament… but I didn’t want to? Gabriel mesmerized me. My eyes couldn’t get enough of her, and all my nerves felt like they were on fire. A flush consumed my face, and my knees had no strength in them. Shit, am I a monster fucker? Yes, Gabriel is human, but that only meant I didn’t dismiss her attractiveness. She still very much looked like a monster. Fuck, I am a pervert. After certain experiments, I knew I found both men and women attractive. I told myself that was limited to humans, but the evidence of my body’s reaction proved that to be a well-crafted lie. Dammit.
After the thirty or so stomps, Burn Bright wrapped Gabriel in chains of fire and surrounded her with dozens of spears. “Enigma, calm down. Dammit kid, going berserk is a good way to get yourself killed... But you can’t hear me right now.” The professor continued to grumble until the rage left my friend’s eyes.
When Gabriel looked down at her lithe lethal form, I knew she would never give it up. I had lost the duel, but Gabriel’s real victory was over herself. Contentment, comfort, and a deep sadness filled my friend’s eyes as she reverted to a human form. I ghosted out of the hole and solidified next to the naked woman as we both waited for Burn Bright’s commentary.
“Exemplar, you froze. I’m not going to speculate as to why, but get that shit sorted. Gabriel, why in the hell did you have to frenzy before taking your strongest form yet? Don’t answer. I don’t care. I expect a proper duel from both of you tomorrow. Get over your hangups and fight to the best of your abilities.” The flames of his armor pulsed with each statement.
Gabriel didn’t respond. Her face twisted through several expressions before she stalked toward the door. Several students whistled at her. She flipped them off before growing fur over her modest regions and leaving. I couldn’t help but watch her go.
Burn Bright rubbed the front of his helmet like it was his face. “She looks exactly like you… Exemplar… us named can get away with being pretty eccentric, but there are limits…”
I held up a finger. “My appetites are not your concern as long as they don’t affect my combat prowess.”
“Yes, as your companion and fellow high tier raider—”
“I would ask that you allow me discretion in this matter.”
He patted my shoulder and squeezed. “I still remember when a fucking twelve-year-old showed up to help divert Volcanus. You had Absolute throw you at the Titan’s eye and then surfed down the magma on your shield. We all knew you were completely bonkers by then and would only grow more warped with time. Listen, I got money riding on you making it to your twenties before completely losing it. Help an old man out and keep it together.”
“Who bet against me?”
“If you ever played the death pool with the rest of us, then you would know.”
I crossed my arms. “I was saving my money.”
“Yeah, who would be concerned about the child ascetic living off of blood and murder?” He clapped my back. “That’s enough woolgathering. Get on out of here.”
Rather than head for the showers, I slipped on my cleaning ring and went straight for my enchanting class. As the first to arrive, I commandeered the largest table and set out the materials for several weapons and a few basic sets of brigandine, an armor type more mistakenly known as studded leather.
Vanya approached while I was juggling a dozen processes. “That’s an ambitious workload.”
“Not really.” I riveted mithral plates into the dire bear leather, and the process repeated dozens of time across three sets through sympathetic bonds. “With what Gyro is teaching in the Advanced Fabrication class, I can churn out low tier gear fairly quickly. My team is poorly equipped, and I mean to address that.”
“A fire sword, a lightning spear, an acid axe, and a greatbow? Why a greatbow?”
I tapped a rune on it and willed the device to shift. The bone-bow bent in the middle until the two ends made a handle and Akashic crystal spikes jutted from the top of the mace. “Once I finish the Blood Arrow enchantment, it’ll be done. The mace will drink blood from foes to build up charges that Derek can then fire in the bow configuration. I figure that will give him an incentive to practice the bow. Originally, I was going to use this myself, but we rarely fight things that aren’t within my thrown weapon range distance.”
As I explained myself, I noticed Vanya. She had always been beautiful. Originally, I had assumed it was in spite of her elven features, but after my recent revelation, I could admit I found the long pointed ears distinguished and could chart the stars of her eyes all day. My pulse quickened, and I found myself afflicted with another crush. Dammit.
I closed my eyes and briefly meditated on this awakening within myself. These weren’t new feelings; I had simply suppressed them with lies that I no longer believed. What other dark truths am I shying away from? This matter would require control and self-discipline. I couldn’t let myself be ruled by passions. Especially disgusting ones. I paused at the thought. The patterns were too similar to other kinds of self-hatred I had in the past. I pulled back and tried to break it down. What’s the harm in laying with monsters? It would leave me vulnerable to attack, and their wiles could seduce me away from humanity’s cause. No it wouldn’t. Right, I loved killing monsters too much for that to happen. If that was the case then… I didn’t see a logical reason not to indulge.
A lifetime of cultural inertia wouldn’t be dislodged by a few moments of self reflection, but I had to ponder this. Maybe Riena and her high-tower ways could provide illumination on my struggles. I would have to ask her when we got a private moment.
When I opened my eyes, Gyro started her lecture. This ended Vanya’s series of questions I had been ignoring and let me get back to work on the arms and armor. Gyro had the rune for Space on the board along with many of the critical modifying runes that worked with it. Modifying runes specified a relation and permuted the function of core runes to create various effects. A Fire rune could create a ball or a stream based on the modifying runes used. Modifying runes could be used on modifying runes to create more complicated and nuanced variations that…
It clicked. The Space rune slotted into my head. Treating a relation as a substance gave it substance, made it an aspect to emulate. Space could exist because it didn’t need a reason to exist. The space between things would still be there if the things disappeared, but we worked with the spatial relations because we sought to manipulate things with space. The knowledge felt like madness. I was sure I couldn’t properly articulate the knowing of it to someone without a broad understanding of magic. Riena was right about needing a fuller lexicon.
“Looks like Exemplar got it!” Gyro interrupted her lecture to single me out. “Mastering space is what sets true Crafting apart from dabblers. No matter what language you use, this is a significant hurdle to overcome. I hope your revelation in my class is your most important one of the day.” She winked at me and went back to her lecture.
I blushed and hurried through my Crafting. How quickly do the Professors spread gossip? How obvious was my infatuation with Gabriel’s scaly ass? The embarrassment was funneled into more work. Anyone who has pushed themselves near the abyss and crawled back can tell you that any emotion or feeling can be used to motivate further action.
Vanya peeked at my blush with an inquisitive expression and—Ahhh! She’s too close—Breathe. One of my mental defenses kicked in when I got too flustered and calmed my mind. The flush left my face and calm radiated through my body as the waking meditative technique took hold.
Once class finished, I assured Vanya, “I’ll be done with these in a bit, and then I’ll talk with Scarlet. My team also wants to help search for Axel. We can do that tomorrow.”
“Sure,” she responded. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about whatever happened?”
“I need time to sort my own thoughts about it.”
“Talking through your feelings is supposed to be raw and messy.”
I sighed. “That hasn’t been my experience. When I’m too honest with people, they get creeped out or scared. Showing vulnerability always leads to pain. Give me time to decide how I can best present my dilemma in a palatable way.”
“Whatever it is, I’ve heard far worse from other elves. You can trust me.”
“It’s not about trust. I don’t want to needlessly burden a friend. Making myself palatable to be around is part of that.”
“Mari, you don’t need to try. People like you for you.”
I gave her a flat look. “No they don’t. My friends might like me for me, but people only like the idea of me. That idea didn’t spring about in their heads on accident. I cultivated my image for years. Every mannerism and motion is perfectly designed and performed to invoke the reaction I want. I’m only this relaxed because I’m around other elite heroes, but this too is intentional. I want them to see me at ease while at Aspiration, one of humanity’s deadliest battle lines. It’s all planned. You only see the real me during a fight. Tell me, do you like that version of Mari?”
Vanya shrugged. “I do, but I reject the notion that that is the only true version of yourself. You choose to act a certain way. That’s as real as anything lingering underneath. Also, it’s hard to disparage yourself while you're making gifts for your friends.”
“These are tactically necessary items!”
“Suuuure. Well, see you tomorrow, Mari.”
Vanya left me to my devices. I finished Crafting my team’s gear and deposited it in our dorm. Riena had left a note on the countertop specifying where Scarlet wanted to meet me, so I headed there next.
The Commander’s tower had far more statues, paintings, and other pieces of art than the other towers, as was only natural. Successful Commanders could afford greater luxuries. Displaying those luxuries signaled that you were successful. So much of leadership was exhausting presentation and politics; never a role I desired. If pressed, I could put on the pomp and ceremony of Command, but I tended to lose patience quickly and cut through intrigue with brute force. Since that wasn’t efficient, I was a Commander of last resort, stepping up only when all the others were dead or indisposed, a fate that happened all too often.
Scarlet wanted to meet in a circular garden with a fountain that an artist had enchanted to gush water like fresh arterial blood. The viscous movement was soothing and reminded me of previous victories. Around it were flowering vine covered pillars, rose bushes, and a dimming sunroof. All the adornment didn’t hide the traps under the tiles or the archers hidden behind slits.
“Bold of you to come to a place of my choosing.” Scarlet entered behind me. She had brought her entire team as an attempt to disguise her other forces. They spread in an arc and had their weapons ready. “Especially after recent incidents.”
I sighed. “And what are you referring to?”
“You ‘investigated’ the terrorism with the primary suspect. During that time, you found ‘evidence’ of a human collaborator and encountered an orc. Then you gathered all the information about the supposed ‘true culprit’ and it was stolen by the same orc under your watch.”
I rolled my eyes. “And you’ve busied 17 heroes with this ambush instead of searching for Axel. What if you’re secretly working with him and the orc? Perhaps Gentle Night has no intention of killing Axel and is actually covering his tracks while you help her with their real aims.”
“There is the inquisitor I looked up to!” Scarlet nodded. “Suspicion isn’t a binary metric. By being involved in the hunt at all, I carry some. You’ve had multiple incidents with an orc assassin. Both of you left those encounters with recoverable harm. The potential for treachery is there. Given your proximity to an elf, you could be betraying humanity without realizing it.”
“Specious reasoning is not a proper investigation method. I always found hard proof before capturing an elf and burning them at the stake, which I’ve since learned is a less than ideal execution method. While an elf may be too strong or shade corrupted to treat in this life, a less painful death lowers their chance for evil in the next one.”
“Ah, you’ve fallen for one of the classic elf lies. We burn them for justice, to give them a lingering wound to remember their crimes by. That agony is eternal restitution for their victims, but I digress.” She tossed me a ratty journal with frayed corners. “We found that in a dungeon. It appears to be Axel’s, but we haven’t opened it yet out of concern for a trap.”
I flipped open the pages and found an orc to human dictionary. “Yes. It’s non-magical in nature, but quite lethal. I have a temporary defense against the effects, but the rest of you would have died.” I shut the book and stowed it in my satchel. “If you find more journals, you should hand them over to me, and I’ll tell you if they contain anything relevant.” Might as well learn the orc tongue all the way while I’m at it.
“And I assume you can’t tell us the nature of the danger nor how you are resisting it.” Scarlet smiled knowingly.
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Axel or the orc, I can’t tell which, overplayed their hand. Exemplar, you’re too suspicious. I don’t trust it. It feels like you are being intentionally framed for us to turn against. I won’t be that easily manipulated. For now, I’ll trust you with the journals. More of the school is getting involved in the hunt for Axel. The fourth years are busy with a distributed demon incursion from the higher tier portals. The third years are investigating an increase in portal proliferation. The second years found traces of a necromancer festering in the utility sections. That leaves Axel’s machinations to us first years. We have a lot of dungeons to search and very little manpower to do it.”
“Are you suggesting nightly dungeon raids for every team?”
“I wasn’t but—”
“No, I’m running the numbers. Nightly seems to be the proper pace. We may need to clear the low tier dungeons in duos to maintain our pace. I trust the Commanders can coordinate between themselves and make sure we don’t step on the upperclassmen’s material needs. Ah, but that’s only really a concern for Crafters.” I started pacing. “It’ll be tight, but I think through enough determination and grinding, we can do it.”
“Are you excited? Is this your idea of fun?” Scarlet sputtered.
“Of course it is. I love slaying monsters. The only reason I got involved in hunting elves is because I was stuck at home and bored.”
“You aren’t lying. How can you not be lying?”
“It’s alright, Scarlet. Not everyone can love heroism as much as I do.”
After she got over her shock, we made sure our raiding plans didn’t overlap, and I went to tell my team the good news.
